Digitising your artwork: how does it work (and is it any good)?

When it comes to preparing your artwork for print, we find a lot of artists approach with curiosity – how will it work? Is it worth it? Will it be right for me and my art?

Many artists can get caught up on the quality of the finishing touches – the type of paper, the format, the size. But it’s important not to get ahead of yourself. What really affects the quality of you prints the most is capturing the essence of the original artwork.

That is, the digitisation process.

Get digitisation wrong, and your prints will be disappointing, regardless of paper quality or size. Get it right, and you will have a digital file able to produce breathtaking prints that perfectly reflect every nuance of your original piece.

3 steps to quality digitisation

Printing art isn’t worth it if the digitisation process isn’t carried out to the highest quality. That’s why at Creffield we’ve spent the time, effort and money to perfect our digitisation process.

Let me lay it out for you:

Your work needs to be photographed, to create a digital file. An iPhone snap won’t do – these photographs are taken in a studio, using specialised camera equipment and lighting.

When the photo is perfect, an archive file will be created and adjusted for corrections. This includes colour correction and depth perception, to bring out exact shades and brush strokes.

Next, we’ll print a test strip using our custom created profiles. This step is vital, with our colour profiles specifically created for our machines and fine art paper. This process takes around 12 hours for each profile, and is created using equipment worth over $100,000 – so it’s one that’s not easily replicated.

We find nothing kills quality like bad communication, so we will always consult with you after every step. If you’ve already got a digital file of your work, we’ll skip straight to step 3.

Enjoy the endless possibilities of digital art

Congratulations – you now have an extremely detailed, beautiful digital file that can be used to print in any format, or be displayed online.

As you can see, it’s a detailed, specialised process, but once you’ve gone through it you have a digital file of your art that can be used again and again.

A digital file will remain intact long after an original piece has deteriorated, and doesn’t require space or intricate care to store. Interested in joining the digital realm? Get in touch.